Though Microsoft told Edge earlier today that it “does not comment on rumor or speculation” in regards to recent claims that the global enterprise may be shedding its staff, the company did make a slight alteration to the ancient art of ‘no comment’.

Following our call to Microsoft, an email was sent by the company with a link to the Seattle Post-Intelligence’s Microsoft Blog, in which the author rubbishes the widespread rumours that thousands of jobs are under threat.

Seattle Post-Intelligence, based just west of Microsoft’s Redmond headquarters in Washington, claims that two original sources of the speculation – news blogs Mini-Microsoft and Fudzilla – have both “backtracked on their reports”.

“Fudzilla, for instance, said in its initial report that Microsoft was considering cutting up to 17 percent of its ‘90,000 employees’, a number which seemed to refer to the 95,768 employees directly employed by the company. That number does not include contractors,” said SPI. “In a more recent report, Fudzilla backtracked saying, ‘There's a big chance that a large chunk of the 17 percent figure could come out of the agency staff.’ ‘Agency staff’ refers to contractors.’”

The Microsoft blog had contacted some of those contractors recently, with an unnamed source explaining that more contract projects than usual are being cancelled.

While the Seattle Post-Intelligence is not a subsidiary, representative, or business partner to Microsoft, the software giant’s link to the article may be more telling of the truth of the matter. Yesterday an unnamed source at Microsoft told CNBC that speculation regarding the layoffs is “grossly exaggerated”.

"Massive layoff" unlikely [via Microsoft Corp]